First Ski Lessons

Gabi and Bella started ski lessons at Eldora (near Boulder, CO). We made our first day trip on the last Saturday of January for a half-day afternoon lesson.

Unfortunately, the weather was so windy that Bella couldn't even stay standing up and had to drop out of the lesson. The strong wind swirled the dry powder into clouds of snow reminiscent of West Texas dust storms. The cold air stung cheeks and chilled fingers and caused runny noses, so I stayed inside the lodge with Katarina, where Bella later joined us. Gabi stuck with the entire ski lesson, though.

This past Saturday, we returned to Eldora on a beautiful, sunny day with only a calm breeze. It was actually warmer up on the mountain than in Denver this weekend! We left early in the morning so Gabi could ski a full-day lesson. Bella and I hung out near the lodge in the morning and spent some time sledding before her afternoon ski lesson.

By the end of the day, both girls were enjoying skiing. Gabi's class even went over to the little mountain instead of staying on the bunny slope. It was nice outside, so I took a bunch of pictures and videos. I'm so proud of my girls!

Cookie Experiment

We tried this on Gabi when she was Bella's age. Annabelle just celebrated her 4th birthday, so now it's her turn.

Bella had asked to bake some cookies, so Michael helped her in the kitchen. Then, of course, she wanted to eat her cookies. Can she prevent herself from eating the cookie on her plate in order to earn a second cookie later?



Notice how well Annabelle is attending to Michael at the beginning. I'd like to point out that, initially, Michael put a cookie in front of her and said, "You can eat this now if you want to." Bella promptly picked up the cookie and took a bite, before Michael could explain the deal. Ha-ha! So he took the cookie away, restarted the video, and tried again. :) You decide whether that counts as being able to delay gratification.

Michael added the annotations. My favorite is the caption at 1:02 -- "Kid instinct: see cookie, must eat. Oh... right... waiting..."

I love Bella's tactic here. "Okay, so I get one cookie now, or two cookies after you go on a walk... so... can I go on a walk with you? Or, better yet, while I'm waiting, can I ride in the chariot behind Mommy's bike?" We just bought the chariot (bike trailer), and the family we bought it from forgot to bring the flag that helps cars see the trailer, so she'll have to bring that part later.

"Okay, fine, so I don't get to go on the walk. I guess I'm supposed to sit here. I'll just... go potty. And then... I'll try talking to Mommy, who I can't see, but I know she's in the other room."

Man, it was heart-breaking to have to ignore her when she tried to strike up an unrelated conversation! "Mommy, what's your favorite animal?" Oh, she looks so sad in the video when I didn't respond to her at all!

But, again, she's a smart girl. If she can't eat the cookie now, why bother sitting there? She goes to find me (and I feign sleep). But then Daddy returns, so she quickly runs back as if her self-control might not count if she didn't stay at the table by the cookie.

First Steps

Over the past week, Katarina learned how to walk! Wednesday of last week she consciously took her first few unsupported steps. (The prior week, we had been able to trick her into taking a step or two, until she realized we had let go of her hands.) Each day, Kati became braver and more stable. Wednesday of this week, she just took off walking across the room. Now she is walking all around the house and outside, too!


These video segments were taken Thurs., May 19th through Wed., May 25th, so you can see how her gross motor skills progressed in just one week. In the middle, I took a video of her learning how to stand up on her own without pulling up on someone or some thing. In that clip, she also did her sign for stand up (reaching up) to tell me she was trying to stand up. She is so proud of herself, and she loves praise and applause.

PreK3 Spring Program

Bella was a mouse in her PreK-3 class Spring program on May 20, 2011. She loved learning and singing all these songs!

Bella talking as Ms. Laura gives her whiskers

Bella telling stories while Ms. Mandy tries to apply lipstick

Katarina hanging out in the classroom "backstage"

Singing on stage

Bella hugging David, her fellow mouse

Great job, Bella!

Kindergarten Play

Gabi was a Granny Smith apple in her Kindergarten play on May 12, 2011. For each month of the school year, the Kindergarten Play included a poem and a song about what the Kindergarten classes learned in science, history, or math.


UPDATE: I uploaded a higher-res version of this video.

This year, the Kindergarteners studied:
August - school and family
September - apples (Johnny Appleseed and two apples)
October - farms (farmer and animals)
November - Thanksgiving (pilgrims and Indians and a turkey)
December - fractions and Christmas (Santa and children)
January - seasons and weather (sun, raindrop, and rainbow)
February - famous Americans and US money (American presidents)
March - insects and telling time (dancers)
April - plants (and rain)
May - parts of a flower

To shorten the video, I only included the poems that Gabi recited. Also, Michael moved to get a different videoing angle during the October song, so Gabi recorded that song on her own at home. By the way, Gabi's favorite people to read about in February were Betsy Ross and Helen Keller.

In the Dressing Room

On Stage

Johnny Appleseed poem

Dancing

Great job, Gabi!

Greek Food Fest

And after much delay, I have returned to bring you pictures and videos from the Greek Food Fest at the local Orthodox church the fourth weekend in May.

While I do look forward to the yummy gyros, lamb, souvlaki k-bobs, and baklava, the dancing entertainment is probably the highlight of this festival for our family. The Micro (pronounced "mee-crow") Greek dancers were adorable:

Bella danced along with the Greek circle-dances:

Gabi especially liked the Dabkeh (Middle Eastern) dancers (which she called the "duckie dancers"). I don't think I took a still photo of the Dabkeh dancers, but you can see a short clip at the beginning of the first video below. Here she posed with a young Indian dancer:

Of course, we loved the Irish dancing!

Even Katarina enjoyed the costumes, music, and dancing:

The kids wanted to go back all three hot days to see more dancing! They were hoping to get to dance in the free style dance at the end of the third day, but the official dancers were too exhausted to lead the free style and concluded early.

For your enjoyment, here are a few videos of the dancing that we saw. The first is a compilation of various Greek, Indian, and Middle-Eastern (Turkish, etc.) dances. I have more footage of these dances, but for some reason I put this together before copying all the clips from the new video camera.



The second video is a soft-shoe Irish dance, and the final one is a hard-shoe Irish dance.

Bella's Gymnastic Olympics

Bella is our very expressive two-and-a-half-year-old. She has the biggest smile and the loudest cry; she is hot or cold but genuine either way. Her wild hair requires attention every day but also garners compliments everywhere we go. She is active and constantly in motion. When she gets sick, it affects her more than most and causes awful coughs. We love her so much!

Bella's favorite colors are purple and yellow, a preference which colors most of her decisions from crayon or candy selection to which clothes or hairbows she is willing to wear. Getting her dressed for these pictures took much encouragement and distraction, and in the end only worked because she loves ladybugs (she'd just prefer yellow or purple ladybugs).

Bella started gymnastics this year, and it is the perfect activity for her! She took a parent-child class in the mornings when no one else was using the gym. The gym held a Spring Olympics program so all the classes could show off their skills. The program was extremely chaotic with multiple age groups rotating around, plus having an audience (which included Lolo and Lola!) was very confusing and distracting. I put together a video of the Olympics program, although my video-editing software was continually crashing, so I didn't professionally finish it. Watch for her to "blow kisses" at the end.



Bella adores her bigger sister Gabi and happily copies everything she does as they play. Bella is also a sweet big sister who loves to help take care of the baby. One day while I was standing in line at the post office, Bella kept talking and singing to Katarina and tucking her in with the little blanket I had in her carseat.

The last picture is Bella and some friends catching bubbles at preschool. Their last week of school was last week, and Bella misses it already (especially since big sister Gabi is still in school through this week).

The Writing on the Wall

Gabi posing in the hydrangeas (not in bloom) at CTK for Gramma Jane, who is considering planting these in her garden.

Gabi's class took a field trip to the Wonder Place, and she and Nathan were entranced by the rolling ball sculpture.

Back in April when Uncle Stephen and Uncle Brian came to visit, we found this on Gabi's wall after naptime. I can just see Bella scribbling on the wall and big sister Gabi stepping into a mini-Mommy role. Regarding writing on the wall:

And after I had a short talk with Gabi about the fact that I didn't like to see that she had written on the wall, I soon find an addendum she wrote to herself:

So then I instructed Gabi to erase all of it, which she did, and that solved the problem.

The first week in May, Gabi's PreK class performed a spring play called Down by the Creek Bank. Gabi and her friend Grey were little white ducks. In the weeks leading up to the program, Gabi would recite poems from the play about various animals and tell me whose line each was. She has an excellent memory.

In the classroom after the play, Katarina was surrounded by kids adoring her. Gabi's friend Samantha was especially enamored with the baby.

That same day was picture day in Gabi's dance class. The recital is not until June this year, so you can look forward to that video later.

Gabi loves to help me cook (or fold laundry, or take care of her sisters, or generally whatever I'm doing). When she gets to help cook, she likes to wear her apron that Gramma Jane made her:

When Gabi and I played her Funny Phone game during quiet time one afternoon, one of Gabi's activities was to draw a strawberry for me to guess. Later, when she used the alphabet magnets to hold this drawing on the refrigerator, she needed three Rs to spell "strawberry" but we only have one of each letter, so she improvised.

I believe this happened while I was packing for our trip to Notre Dame. Katarina woke up, and Gabi drew this to tell me that her baby sister was crying. We like to call Katarina by the nickname Kätchen, which is what Gabi was spelling here.

And here's a "map" that Gabi drew for Bella:

Gabi has an art table with a light that shines through cards, making a shadow of a Disney picture on the table for her to trace. The images aren't crisp, so tracing is more difficult than tracing from a coloring book. Here is Flounder: